5 Historical Medical Treatments Still In Use Today

We’re able to benefit from a wide range of medical advances that have been made in the last few decades, especially thanks to huge leaps in the technology available at an affordable cost to hospitals, medical professionals and individuals. You might think that with all these advances we have mostly abandoned the rudimentary methods used to treat ailments in centuries gone by, but in fact there are many old fashioned treatments still in use across the world to this day. Here is a round-up of the top 5 surprising methods still used today.

Bee Venom

This has been used for thousands of years and is still going strong, sometimes involving milked venom and sometimes actually being stung by a bee. The reason this treatment is still widely used is thanks to its wide range of applications, having been shown in some cases to help with rheumatism, herpes, arthritis, tendinitis and even potentially cancer.

Maggots

Maggot therapy is used to clear dead tissue from open wounds, and this is very popular across the world today because it’s simply very effective. It’s necessary in cases where wounds are struggling to heal naturally.

Intestinal Parasites

Nobody actually knows how this works yet, so the concept is still being scientifically tested, but the method has been around for centuries. All we know is that in countries with high levels of parasitic infections like hookworm, there are extremely low rates of auto-immune diseases and allergy problems.

Trepanation

The method of cutting a hole in a person’s skill has been seen throughout history as far back as we are aware, and used to treat a variety of problems from mental illness to chronic migraines. Now it is mostly only used to treat subdural hematoma, where blood collects around the brain inside the skull.

Eating Live Fish

This has been widely used, mainly in India by the famous Bathini Gaud family, as a cure for asthma. Live fish are swallowed along with a top secret recipe of medicine that, following by a closely controlled diet, is alleged to have cured millions of the disease.